Inside Out

Jan Wotton has developed a stand-up routine for tourists who visit her gift shop in Carcross, Yukon Territory.

Carcross Barracks houses an original jail cell from the gold rush era, and Wotton and other employees greet customers in Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniforms.

Wotton starts out by saying she came to the Yukon in 1885 and joined the mounties because she heard they ``always get their man.'' When it's noted that she doesn't look that old, she quips: ``Thank you, sir; it's the permafrost.''

Conspiracy theory

From the Petersburg Pilot's police blotter, July 27 edition: ``A caller reported to the police that there was an organization of people who follow him around the world to harass him and steal and vandalize his property. The caller reported that the organization had followed him to Petersburg and punctured his bicycle tire that morning.'' We all have days like that.

Little house on the muskeg

Our Inside Source at the Fiddlehead (can we call her Deep Toast?) reports that a tourist couple seated at the window asked their waitress about the quaint little hillside house with the columns. Was it a bed and breakfast? A hotel? Of course, it was the guv's mansion. Little, indeed!

Got snow?

When North Dakota Senate candidate Duane Sand wanted to portray himself as a wilderness kind of guy, he had a problem. The image he sought was of a parka-clad Dakotan trudging across a vast expanse of blowing snow. But he had to come here to find the snow. Sand, a former Navy submarine officer running as a Republican, chose Alaska because it has ``the appropriate weather befitting January in North Dakota.'' Or September in Fairbanks?